Red Light
by keeponwritin
Summary: Red. Red meant stop. Stop and take a look around. Understand where you are and where you're going before you drive off like nothing behind you matters.


A/N: Um, woo! I've been writing this for a while (kinda) and I'm kinda relieved it's over with. Now I can work on jayfic, woo, among other things. Okay, this is yet another Ellie-fic. Sorry. I promise to branch out next time! ...Maybe. Possibly.  
  
A small warning: Um, I guess some of this might offend...someone. But if you're offended by anything so petty then you're just a loser. Woo.  
  
The song = Fefe Dobson's We Went For A Ride.  
  
Bitty ups to the skank KT. Cause um, without our RPG escapades, I...don't think I'd ever have written this story. In fact, ups to Aims and Lane too, for um. Being hot. Shyeah. Okay. Story. Right. Onto that.  
  
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The rumbling beneath my feet was soothing. The windows were down and a cool breeze swept through my hair, throwing loose strands in front of my eyes. Neon signs cast hazy purple glares on spots moonlight had previously shone its white light. My red locks glowed fuschia. I silently laughed at the sharp contrast–this street was so busy during the day, shoppers preyed on sales and teenagers lounged on benches older than they. I wanted their carefree lives. I wanted to lie on a park bench and drink 70¢ convenience store soda and eat Hershey's bars until my stomach turns on me and wonders what it did to deserve such torture, and my brain senses pleasure and craves it and soon, it's no longer just my brain, my whole body needs that high and I go there daily and sit on that same bench and buy from that same convenience store and feed my addiction. I needed an addiction, a life where all that mattered was obtaining happiness and trapping it within myself. But my conscience was not my guide. My conscience was the droning, whiny perfectionist that was caught in a tiny bubble inside me when I first tried to steal a crayon from the boy sitting next to me in first grade. I never wanted it. But it was so deeply imbedded in me, like a virus that digs its way into you and just...becomes a part of you. After a while, I just let it have its way, and let it shepherd my life.  
  
"You're quiet tonight." The voice was deep, but soft. The silence that followed was gentle. I closed my eyes and imagined the car never stopped at my house. I saw us driving forever, into unfamiliar territory, but as long as I was here, with him in the driver's seat, nothing could harm me, because I'd left my pain in Degrassi. My weary eyes opened and I looked over at him. The car was at a red light. Red. Red meant stop. Stop, and take a look around. Understand where you are and where you're going before you drive off like nothing behind you matters. My eyes focused on his lips, the slight smirk I could see he was suppressing. Maybe he was watching me as I closed my eyes. I didn't care. For a moment, I was enraptured by the cycling of thoughts in my head: not only the physical touch of his lips against mine, but the death of my conscience and the knowledge that I was kissing Tracker Cameron. All in my mind, though.  
  
"I know," I said quietly.  
  
_We went for a ride  
Undercover of the twilight   
And the traffic on the road  
And there's only you and I  
I hope we never get back home  
Cause I'm feeling serenaded  
By the coming of the night  
And I wish we'd go forever  
And I wish we could just  
  
_I had been going out with Sean for almost seven months now. No one expected us to last this long. Of course, I didn't. I was a pessimist, after all. Plus, we had all these ups and downs, usually having something to do with Jay and his gang and how much they all disliked me. But in the end, it was Sean who understood me. It was Sean who could kiss me and make life feel wonderful again. It was Sean who gave me hope that I was not destined to live a lonely, miserable life, watching over my drunken mother and taking the occasional phone call from my father, millions of miles away. It was someone real that I could touch, and hug, and kiss, and live for, and die for. Sean became my hope. And he still was. No one expected this to last because they saw Sean's persona–the gangster, the rebel, the outcast. It didn't even matter that no one understood what we had. Because I knew it was special, and when you've fallen for someone so fast, so hard, other opinions don't matter. It's just you, and this person, wrapped up and blinded in sheets of yourselves. I stayed like that for the longest time. For days and months and what felt like years, I felt like I could only die happy in Sean's arms, and everything slipped out from underneath me, but he held me so closely, I didn't need to have my feet firmly planted on the ground. I could just be whisked away in a moment, at the drop of a hat. My grades slipped, I lost my internship, I stopped caring about my mother and my father, there were some days I didn't bother going to school. Everything from the moment Sean became my boyfriend until two weeks ago was hazy and surreal. It was robotic and controlled and so, so...unexciting. But it was a relationship, the friendship I had so lacked in years passed. I was tired of Ash, moping and crying over Craig, and I was tired of Marco, unable to detach himself from Dylan long enough to talk to me. Sean understood I needed to be someone's top priority. And he did that for me. And I appreciated it, I so appreciated it, and I loved him, but something about our relationship...faded away. And I seemed to be the only that noticed. That's why I did this, that's why I am the liar and the cheater and the horrible girlfriend I am now, because I can't take him anymore. I couldn't point out one thing in particular I didn't like about him. It was the entire package. His naiveté, his temper, his stupidity, everything, all of it, I hate it. I swallowed the growing lump in my throat. I don't regret it, I told myself forcefully. I don't regret any of it.  
  
_Drive away  
We could drive away  
We could drive away  
Into the night  
We went for a ride  
  
_So what'd you guys do tonight? he asked at the next red light. These conversations were killer. He knew it. It lay in his smirk or in his voice or in his eyes. I could never decide. One of them--or all of them, for all I know--just made you watch, or listen, or stare. His words were one thing, and his reasoning was another subject all on its own. He could ask how you were feeling, and you'd feel like he was suggesting something, like he was so, so slyly reeling you in, never making the first move but playing his cards so delicately so he knew you would fall for it all, and make the first move yourself. It was horrible and terrible and treacherous and so, so intriguing.  
  
Um, we saw a local band, I said quietly. The um' I'd uttered as a sentence intro became the tiny itch on my back that I could not touch, let alone scratch. It not only seemed childish and stupid, but only provoked the small smirk further, like a silent code telling me he could see my right hand shaking at my side, or hear my heart palpitating. It was like he knew all. Tracker Cameron, god of omniscience. Bad Yellow? I stuttered out, not even able to make out a full sentence. He nodded, acknowledgingly, or maybe in approval. Everything he did was a riddle, an answer wrapped in thousands of layers of tissue paper, and you could only tear away a layer at a time. My silence and my sullen demeanor was my petty way of apology, to both him and Sean, for ruining their lives, whether they knew it or not. My mind suddenly refocused itself on an unfamiliar hole in the fishnet stockings encasing my legs. I stared with unblinking eyes and within a second, my life had become this tiny thread that had broken apart from the rest, throwing off the perfect pattern, standing out so disgracefully from the rest. When I blinked again, my eyes were warm and wet with emotionless tears.  
  
_With your words of consolation  
And the trees of crystal white  
I'll be praying for a red light  
To extend this precious night  
Cause we both know where I'm going  
And we know it just ain't right  
And there's nothing we can do   
Except to keep on moving  
  
_My hair was down this particular night, and already staring downward, it veiled my face, shielding me, protecting me. Before I could control any of it, before I could lock my door and slash my wrists and pretend I was fine, tears ran their courses down each side of my face, silently falling onto the black skirt, becoming invisible, fading away like nothing had happened. Like I'd been pretending to do, for months, years. I make brash and uncareful decisions, and I push myself farther down the rope to insanity, but I can't see myself without these. My mistakes were yet another piece of me, shards glued back together to form a cracked memento of who I used to be. I savored them, I enjoyed them, I reveled in their excitement until their consequences caught up with me, and I was forced to begin anew, with another intentional misjudgment. This was my thrill and my method of making life interesting. Screwing up had always been expected of me anyway--back when there were still people having any expections of me, anyway--so I might as well give them what they want. I absentmindedly pulled at the shoelaces of my boots. The rumbling beneath my feet came again, as the car gently came to rest. I could see without looking up the red light reflecting off the hood of the car. Every red light meant more time to analyze and tear apart my life in desperate attempts to find answers.   
  
Two weeks ago, I sat in the same spot. I sat in this same spot with my lips attached to his and I checked my rational thoughts at the door. Sean didn't exist and even if he did, he didn't matter. My hand ran through his hair and he gently touched my hip with his warm hand and I was so beautifully lost, and then it left, as quickly as it came. A wave of guilt suddenly crashed into me. I had to apologize, I had to go tell Sean, I had to go watch blood pour from my wrists until I felt I'd paid the price and learned from my actions. I sat for what felt like an hour before I abruptly opened the door and slammed it shut, and ran inside my house, ran into my room, grabbed the blade from my bedside table and collapsed onto my knees on the floor. I tried, tried to kill my pain and my guilt and hopelessly tried to bring back my innocence. I saw myself in the mirror and I choked on a small sob. I was broken.   
_  
Drive away  
We could drive away  
We could drive away  
Into the night  
  
_I was still crying now, my only thoughts of Sean and guilt, and guilt and Sean. Rehearsed confessions and attempted apologies. Unacceptable explanations and brutal words. How I could never let go of Sean but yet I could still feel Tracker's warmth on my skin and stubble chafe my chin and lips so unexpectedly soft..  
  
L was a letter. It stood for light, and lunacy, and lament, and love. I am Eleanor Nash. I am not L. I'm not El. I'm not Ellie. I am a girl who has no idea what she's doing in life. I am a blank slate waiting to take form, to be painted with beautiful colors and be told what I should do in life. Until then, I wait. He pulled back my curtain of hair when the car had stopped again. There was no red light on the hood. He said it again. He tucked the veil behind my ear.I looked up with bloodshot eyes, fresh tears still forming and I silently begged for no pity, and he complied. He scooted closer and I felt both his arms around me. It wasn't until then that I realized how cold I had been. I wasn't understanding most of this--how he assumed I needed this hug, and how I assumed he would give me pity and why I was even here, why Sean hadn't come with us and why I was even in the passenger's seat, or how I'd made that hole in my fishnets or why I couldn't lie outside the convenience stores for no reason or why the rumbling feeling beneath my feet was so soothing or why, when I looked up at him once again, I had so shakily touched his lips with mine and brought myself back to square one again.  
  
Hello. I am Eleanor Nash. I have no conscience._  
  
Here we are  
We are alone together  
Drive away  
Drive away  
To any place faraway   
Here we are  
We are alone together  
_  
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Bad Yellow © 2004 KT/Lane/Amy/Aubs. Word.


End file.
